First Apprentice

Chapter 26 Part 3

"If by some miracle you get us sentirus weapons," Tylar continued, "Maria, Philip, Dev, and I are the only ones trained to use them. The other three have never bonded a weapon." Bitterness crept into his voice. "Mitra ordered mine melted down when I resigned my command. I'm the only one with practical experience, and I've never trained anyone in their use. Have you?"

"No," I said, mentally adding another line to the balance sheet for guardian trainers, the more experienced the better.

Lips pursed, I stared over his shoulder to where the cave narrowed before splitting into three paths. My first night I explored a little. My findings weren't shocking. They merely confirmed what my ancestors recorded.

'We smelled the corpses hours before we found the caves,' the first Iver wrote. 'No living Dracons found.'

The magically preserved journal recorded similar entries for another six weeks before they encountered two living Dracon daes, who both surrendered without a fight.

I pointed towards where the cave led deeper into the mountain. "Endellion lost armies to these mountains. Go further in and you'll find thousands of flat pebbles about the size of my thumb along with runes etched into the walls: bone fragments and failed warming seals. If the clans don't kill us when they attack my gates, the winter will. How many sealers rate a stripe?"

"Three, possibly four."

Head cocked, I regarded him. "Possibly? You either have one or you don't."

"Kevin's an instinctive sealer. He learns in hours what took me years. It wouldn't surprise me if he acquired an apprentice stripe during that crazy summon of yours. If he didn't, he's close. Dev and I both rate an apprentice stripe from exposure, not practice. Dev helps maintain the Well, has for years. It's just donating magic, but it's enough for a stripe. I wouldn't put him on a gate without supervision, me either. I practically slept on top of the Daneian Anchorpoint for fifty-seven years. I woke up with mine five years ago, but never did anything to earn it."

Because the gates grant apprentice stripes based on either ability or exposure hours. Grandfather likened the gates to a river and our magic to a stone. Over time, the river tumbles the stone smooth. If a sealer survives the tumbling, he or she earns an apprentice stripe. He acquired his by sitting in the corner studying law while Joel or Terry maintained a gate. Acquiring an ability-based stripe like mine took a decades-long process and compressed it into years, sometimes months.

So much for just handing them each a gate and saying maintain it. I swallowed hard. "The third?"

"Maria's a journeyman in her own right."

One qualified gate maintainer out of thirty. Heat flooded my veins as I recalled how Grandfather once described Terry's battle tactics: traps within traps. I walked into the perfect trap blindly.

In the short term, Terry tolerated me because I was useful. He couldn't repair the Well and the Central Keystone at the same time. They needed Joel at the anchor points as a show of force to make the clans think twice about attacking while the Central Keystone was weakened. I was simply a third pair of hands.

In the long term, Terry didn't want an apprentice. Period.

Thus, he set a trap to remove the pesky apprentice once things settled out.

Terry assigned me gates, knowing I couldn't maintain them all alone. When I asked for help, he promised but never delivered. When my pleas turned desperate, he sent my sealers into the mountains, poisoned, kitted out for summer, and without the sentirus weapons his laws demanded and my office couldn't afford. A perfect two-part trap.